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Updated: September 14, 2025
It was not quite so clear as is commonly thought. The use of poison-gas as a weapon of war was not a German invention; it was suggested by a British chemist to Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. But chemists have nothing to do with international law or morality, and responsibility rests with Governments for their adoption of methods provided by science.
Nearer the house, under a shady d'Amarlis pear tree, four soldiers were lying and playing at cards. They all had attached to their caps masks to protect them from poison-gas with two thick glasses for the eyes, and with this second great pair of eyes on them their heads looked like those of certain worms. In the packs of cards I recognized without trouble some that used to lie by our fire-place.
Poison-gas was an ill-bred attempt at revenge for what they called murder at Neuve Chapelle, just as they found consolation in the sinking of the Lusitania for the ignominous situation of their High Seas Fleet.
"Do you know yet how the thing was done?" "I think I do," he replied, abstractedly. "How was it?" I prompted, for his mind was now on the telegram. "A poison-gas pistol," he resumed, coming back to the work he had just been doing. "Instead of bullets, this pistol used cartridges charged with some deadly powder.
I went through Ypres so many times in early days and late days of the war that I think I could find my way about it blindfold, even now. I saw it first in March of 1915, before the battle when the Germans first used poison-gas and bombarded its choking people, and French and British soldiers, until the city fell into a chaos of masonry.
I have learnt from a conversation with the Kaiser that London is to be destroyed by a succession of fleets of super-aeroplanes launching newly devised explosive and poison-gas bombs of a terribly destructive character. The action taken against General S. is again ordered to be dropped. See the Emperor and persuade him. Blessings upon you.
Poison-gas was not one of the weapons used by the Turks, and the gas-masks seemed a joke to the groups of Australians trying on the headgear in the fields, and changing themselves into obscene specters ... But one man watching them gave a shudder and said, "It's a pity such splendid boys should have to risk this foul way of death." They did not hear his words, and we heard their laughter again.
It was no good some of those old gentlemen saying, "We've got 'em beat!" when from Hooge to the Hohenzollern redoubt our men sat in wet trenches under ceaseless bombardment of heavy guns, and when any small attack they made by the orders of a High Command which believed in small attacks, without much plan or purpose, was only "asking for trouble" from German counterattacks by mines, trench-mortars, bombing sorties, poison-gas, flame-throwers, and other forms of frightfulness which made a dirty mess of flesh and blood, without definite result on either side beyond piling up the lists of death.
The heroes of mythology were but paltry figures compared with those who, in the great war, went forward to the roaring devils of modern gun-fire, dwelt amid high explosives more dreadful than dragons, breathed in the fumes of poison-gas more foul than the breath of Medusa, watched and slept above mine-craters which upheaved the hell-fire of Pluto, and defied thunderbolts more certain in death-dealing blows than those of Jove.
The locking of the armies in the trenches, the sinking of the 'Lusitania', the murder of Nurse Cavell, the use of poison-gas and liquid fire, the submarine warfare, the Gallipoli campaign, the hundred other incidents of the war, almost stunned us at first, and then our minds began to compass the train of events and develop a perspective. I suppose our experience was unique.
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